Felines and Toilet Remote Controls

Matthew Garcia — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:01:18 -0600

Month 2 of working at Aspiration has been a lot more comfortable. Getting used to all of the things that I had to work with during the first month made everything seem new and crazy. But, now that I'm used to working with all the software, the people and the mission, it's been nice. Aspiration is getting ready for our second annual Nonprofit Development Summit in November. It's basically an event to bring people concerned with nonprofit software together in one place to hash it out. A lot of organizations are supporting us by giving us money, like Google, or facilitating discussions/presentations (like Drupal and Joomla). Right now we're still in the early stages but part of my job has been talking to people in the nonprofit industry (especially people on the west coast) and check out their interest in the Summit and whether or not they would like to present or lead a discussion. That's pretty low-key at the moment but I'm sure once the end of October/beginning of November hits, it's gonna be like a cat in a dryer.

At the same time, I am working on a couple of websites for the organization. First, there is a wiki that I'm putting together for the Summit and second, we are putting together a Joomla!-based website for a new aspect of our organization called Answr.net (it will be another resource for nonprofits). I don't know much about Joomla so i've been learning as I go which I love. It's fun to just figure stuff out on your own, you know? But then you run into a brick wall and curse the day you burned your "So You Want to Learn Joomla!" book....

So, i've been splitting up my time talking to people, fleshing out wikis, playing around with Joomla and keeping the balls rollin here at Aspiration.

Speaking of Joomla, a couple weekends ago I went to Joomla! Day at Google in Mountain View. Joomla Day is a chance for people to get together and discuss Joomla with lead developers and also just general users. I was there as a "Joombie" because i had never used Joomla before. The only thing i knew about it was that my boss has a lot of Joomla swag. Regardless it was super interesting and Google was a fun to run around in. Everything is free which is a little unnerving. I walked in and there was this vending machine with Naked juice but it didn't take any money. It just opened. Free Naked juice. weird. That stuff is usually like $3 a pop. The cafeteria was completely open too. Free salads, entrees, Ben and Jerry's, cappuccino... Also, the toilets had remote controls! but I won't get into that unless you ask me.

Oh, and I got business cards which are pretty sweet. I give them out to anyone that will take them. I think that's all for me. Garcia out.

Freezing in August

Matthew Garcia — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:03:02 -0600

My first month out here in San Francisco at Aspiration has been cold. I'm used to humid, high 80s in August and I come here and get 50s? Craziness. Other than realizing I didn't pack enough long sleeves, my concerns have focused on getting familiar with the programs that I need to use on an everyday basis for Aspiration. As the Community Manager for our website, Social Source Commons, one of the things that both my boss Gunner (real name, Allen Gunn) and I want to do is really step up the community aspect of the website. Right now it's a place to find software tools for nonprofits but it lacks a real person to person interactivity that we really want to include into the overall feel of the site. On top of figuring out how to fernaggle more people into the site, I've also been put in charge of revitalizing the blog. In the near future it will turn toward more bug-finding, member-interviewing, and behind the scenes web work. But for now I'm content working in the broader “idea” level.

Finding a place to live in this city (on an Americoprs stipend no less) is on the same level of lottery-winning. It's ridiculous. Luckily I found a cheap place in a good neighborhood that I could afford with the stipend. Sure, the apartment itself is super sketchy and my roomies may or may not be mentally stable BUT who needs to stay home when they live in a city like San Francisco? Other than providing a warm couch to sleep on while I endlessly searched for housing, my supervisor Gunner has been really awesome. He's helped me out with everything that I could have asked for and always makes sure I have what I need. Because Aspiration is relatively small, Gunner, Mike (the operations manager) and I have become pretty close, both literally and figuratively. Luckily they are both really good at what they do. Which I would say is almost a bad thing because in reality, Aspiration could use about 3 Gunners and 2 Mikes but they both enjoy doing everything so they are constantly busy. One of the worries that I had when I first got here was that I would have to really fight to fit myself into their schedules and while that's been true to a certain extent, I feel like they do a good job of not forgetting that I have a job here that's rather separate but still important. We'll see how it pans out in the months to come.

Gunner is mildly paranoid about Microsoft and government interference, (most likely due to his affiliation with protest groups) so our office is very pro-open source. We use Open Office for all of our document needs and we'll soon be transitioning to Ubuntu as the office operating system. It should be sweet because I've always wanted to get into using Linux but never had the right push to do it. Other than working on open source programs, I use a lot of tech mailing lists (NTEN, TechSoup, Riders) and blogs (Beth's Blog, Zen and the Art of Nonprofit technology) to stay on top of the nonprofit technology sector.

Things are going well for the first month and all I can hope is that they stay good when I start getting more into the bulk of what I'll be doing. Luckily, right now when I'm still learning the ropes, my coworkers have been really helpful and the tool resources that I've come in contact with have saved the day. Hope everything is going well for everyone!

Matthew Garcia's Field Reports

Felines and Toilet Remote Controls

Freezing in August